Nigeria must begin to appreciate its thinkers —Professor Raji-Oyelade

Prof. Aderemi Raji-Oyelade is a distinguished researcher and scholar at the Department of English, University of Ibadan. He was the African recipient of the 2017 Humboldt Alumni Award for Innovative Networking Initiatives, which took place recently in Berlin, Germany. He speaks with OYEYEMI OKUNLADE on the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, among other salient issues.

You’re one of the recipients of the Alexander von Humboldt Alumni award; what is the award all about?

The Alexander von Humboldt Alumni Award for 2017 is the ninth in the series. Its focus is to encourage networking among scholars who are engaged in innovative works in their fields. The award is given to those proposals that introduce new initiatives that are inventive in creating a global network among scholars in the applicant’s home country or continent with a view to connecting with scholars in Germany.

is that for this year, the award was given to five scholars, each from Greece, Belarus, Canada, Turkey, and Nigeria.

Being the only African on the award list for 2017, what was the feeling like representing Nigeria in particular and Africa in general?

To tell you the truth, I didn’t realize the feeling until the following day, after the ceremony. My colleague and fellow Humboldtian, Professor Akin Odebunmi, stressed the point that the award was not just for UI and Nigeria, but for Africa! Looking at the photographs of  the award ceremony, I now feel it was something big. Afterall, there is reward for hard work.

What are the prospects, if any, for Nigeria in terms of collaborating with the host nation, Germany?

The activity of collaboration is always already built into the project. No foundation would give you an award if it does not have the merit or the credit of giving back some value or benefits, not in monetary terms but in terms of research outcomes. How do you connect, how do you make meaning and relevance beyond your immediate environment? They look out for projects that encourage global networking. Here, I already have colleagues who have been part of the network. I also have colleagues from across other nations in Africa who are also part of the network. And yes, I have been lucky to have very good hosts and willing collaborators in Germany who are very interested in my scholarship.

You’ve spoken of networking, can you expatiate on it as regards to what you’re up to presently? The project which won the award itself won’t start until September 2017 and it runs till September 2020. What I already put in the proposal is that I am going to network to study certain aspects of cultural transformations that occur to conventional proverbs in a number of African languages. With the collaboration of others, we are collecting and studying samples of new and radical proverbs from thirteen languages across Africa.

I started with the example of Yoruba language and published a number of essays and a book between 1999 and 2012. It was the argument in the 2012 book that I used as the basis for what is now a pan-African project. I refer to it as “Postproverbial Africa Project”. There have been interventions by other scholars like Professor Toyin Jegede of Nigeria, Professor Helen Yitah of Ghana, Professor Gilbert Dotse Yigbe of Togo, Dr Rethabile Possa of South Africa and Dr Ahmad Kipacha of Tanzania, who have done similar researches or made references to the terminology, “postproverbial”. So there is connection already. What I want to build on further is the potential of reaching out to other scholars in other countries and in other disciplines from anthropology to philosophy.

The agenda is to query the native intelligence of our people, to process the nature of changes that have happened to our oral and written materials, to show that there has been a body of philosophy that exists before the knowledge of Western philosophy.

What is HKHN?

HKHN stands for “Humboldt Kolleg in the Humanities in Nigeria”. It is also one of the programmes of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The Humboldt Kolleg is conceived as a conference or workshop for scholars to come together in an academic meeting in which younger scholars would be introduced to research opportunities and facilities available in Germany. It is a colloquium of Humboldtians including other scholars mainly organized to develop a roundtable discussion around a particular theme in their disciplines. I have the honour of being the Convener of the Humboldt Kolleg which will hold in the University of Ibadan, from February 19 to 22, 2018.  Over time, we have noticed that scholarships in the humanities seem to be marginalized. The percentage of scholars in the humanities and the social sciences who are involved in research is gradually decreasing. The HKHN is a proactive response to that decrease or downturn of scholarly engagement in the humanities.

The workshop/conference is also being organized to shoot down some misconceptions. The first misconception is about the term “science”. When they say “scientist” in the German language, the word is Wissenschaftler, which roughly and literally translates as “producer of knowledge”. It goes therefore that a physicist and a philosopher, or an engineer and a linguist, are both united in the intellectual work of fabricating knowledge whether concrete or abstract knowledge. As fabricators or producers, they are all Wissenschaftler(in), scientists by all means. So, when we say HKHN, it doesn’t mean that we are excluding our colleagues in the core natural and applied sciences. We are only pointing directions to those who are in the humanities, the social sciences and education axes that “this conference is for you” so that we can have the opportunity to note that they are a part of the global community of scientists.

What are the problems militating against Nigerians in accessing international awards?

There are so many problems militating against access to international awards. I can only refer to a couple of them. Attitude towards scholarship itself is a major problem. Of course, no scholar of value writes only or deliberately to win awards. You must as a rule derive joy in what you do. There is an attitudinal dysfunction between what we do, what we hope to achieve and what really we should achieve. We always talk about town and gown. Our scholarship must have value, impact and meaning for the society as consumer.

But also, we have a system that is not supportive of scholars nor appreciative of the scholarships. I mean, a state system which does not support translational scholarship as a mode of intellectual production. How many of our policy makers have visited the University of Ibadan library? Or do we actually have a working network, a connection of libraries so that our Ministry of Information would have the best of the scholarly productions of the best productive academics in this country, to be able to use these materials and recommendations that students, doctors and professors provide every year and every session.

A nation without respect for its thinkers cannot call itself a civilized nation. A society where generations of ASUU members have to be struggling continually, agitating for funding and facilities, what kind of system is that? Our best brains started leaving the country since 1986. Now, even our best potential brains who are PhD and  Masters students are leaving. They are leaving because they are getting support elsewhere. Tell me, if a country recognizes my intellect and is ready to support me, why will I not listen to their call? In just a month, a Nigerian senator is getting paid what the university professor will earn in five years, what a secondary school teacher will earn in one decade.

How can we correct these anomalies?

First of all, we must have a national leadership that has listening ears. The United Nations allows a benchmark of 26 per cent of a nation’s budget for the funding of its education. The question is every time and everywhere, how much percentage are we dedicating to education? In the year 2017, Nigeria’s budgetary vote for education is just a bit above 5 per cent. But every ministry is connected to education. For instance, the Ministry of Health would have teaching hospitals, the Ministry of Agriculture has agricultural institutions and extension programmes. Everything has to do with teaching and research,  including technological and other corporate institutions. So, we need to get close to the UN bar or level of reaching 26 per cent for budgeting.